Karel Appel: Quotes about time

Karel Appel was Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet. Explore interesting quotes on time.
Karel Appel: 116   quotes 1   like

“When I was young I once found a book in a Dutch translation, The 'Leaves of Grass'. It was the first time a book touched me by its feeling of freedom and open spaces, the way the poet spoke of the ocean by describing a drop of water in his hand. Walt Whitman was offering the world an open hand (now we call it democracy) and my 'Monument for Walt Whitman' became this open hand with mirrors, so you can see inside yourself.”

Karel Appel

Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), p. 93 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)
Appel's quote is referring to his sculpture 'Monument for Walt Whitman', dedicated to the American poet

Books , World , Way , Feeling

“My work is in a complete transformation. Lately, in my studio in Amsterdam, 'beings' re-emerge more and more, but I have repainted all the canvases that I have brought with me [from Amsterdam to Paris]. It is matter itself. On the canvas, no discovery, no personal drama, no submission to a rhythm.... freed from 'Victory Boogiewoogie' [title of the last work of Piet Mondrian, 1944], bepop, bepop, we free ourselves from rhythm, we are not there yet, but it is coming... Now I paint stains, bigger stains, colours endlessly reapplied one upon the other, I scrape and I put down new stains of colour unto nothing remains but one great plane, concentrated and linked at the same time, suddenly a vivid red or yellow and the canvas and being merge.”

Karel Appel

Quote in a letter of Karel Appel from Paris to Aldo van Eyck, October 1950; as quoted in (MR1-85); Karel Appel, a gesture of colour, Jean-François Lyotard, (original French text of 1992 based upon intensive correspondence with Karel Appel), Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Herman Parret; University Press, Leuven, Belgium, 2009, p. 99

Time , Victory , Painting , Personality

“Every day I have to be awake to escape... The whole world is sleepy. It is a real fight to be awake, to see everything new, for the first time in your life.”

Karel Appel

Quote from 'The eye of the beholder', Carlo McCormick
Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990) not-paged

Life , World , Time , Fight

“One of my first sculptures was made of bicycle parts. I was living at that time in a attic in the red light section of Amsterdam. I started to work without any specific materials. I was looking in the street like when I was a young boy, in the garbage cans, for ropes, wires, and paint. I left my parents in 1940. Years later I saw an exhibition of Kurt Schwitters at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam curated by Willem Sandberg and there I saw the real 'objet trouvé'; until then I had never heard about it. Schwitters was a shattering experience.”

Karel Appel

Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), p. 79 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

Boy , Parent , Light , Time

“Our civilization is in a continuous state of self-repair. Maybe you have undergone surgery once. In former times you might have died. Today everybody can live on and on; everything around us is repaired, even the spirit. Look at the young artists. They only paint the facade and not the things hidden behind it. I don't say that life is lost its originality. I show straightforwardly the state of repair of civilization.”

Karel Appel

Appel is referring to his sculpture 'State of liberty'
Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), p. 85 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

Life , Time , Painting

“It's like this - you are in front of your canvas, you hand holds the paint, ready, raised. The canvas waits, waits, empty and white - but all the time it knows what it wants. So - what does it want, anyway? My hand comes near, my eyes begin to transform the waiting canvas; and when - with my hands holding the paint and my eyes seeing the forms - I touch the canvas, it trembles, it comes to life.”

Karel Appel

Karel Appel's excerpt', c. 1953

Life , Time , Waiting , Painting